Adam Luke’s math classes at Germantown’s Seneca Valley High School were “literally like Greek” to him.
Of course, it would’ve helped if he hadn’t missed quite so many days, or if he had paid a little bit more attention in class. But he also could’ve used some better teachers, he said, calling all but his ninth-grade math class “completely horrible.”
Looking to leave the high school setting, Luke enrolled at Montgomery College’s Germantown campus last winter, midway through his senior year.
“I remember telling my father, ‘This is completely different — I love this,’ ” said the 19-year-old aspiring homicide detective.
The price tag was different, too: Luke tested into remedial math, which cost close to $600 to relearn the concepts he should have picked up over the past four years.
But despite some initial frustration with the placement, Luke said he finally sat in a math class in which he didn’t feel like he was on a different planet.
“It was the way professor [William] Coe brought it to us,” Luke said. He kept it simple, but he didn’t dumb it down. He made us understand it while it was still challenging.”
That kind of success, researchers say, is what makes remedial courses important.
Even so, Luke — along with nearly 70 percent of his peers — could have saved time and money had the instruction sunk in during his first 12 years of school.
“The nice thing about developmental courses, particularly at the community college level, is that they send a message that it’s never too late,” said Carolyn Terry, a dean at Montgomery College in Rockville and a teacher of remedial English. “There’s something to be said about learning when you’re older than 18 years and more focused on the future.”
